Pages tagged "tax reform"

Posted
on In The News
by Political Quarterback
· June 23, 2018 8:30 AM

House Democrats continue to slam President Trump’s tax cuts as lawmakers mark the six-month anniversary of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

“In six months after its enactment, none of the promises that Republicans made are coming into fruition,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said at the Capitol on Friday.

Since passage of the bill, the U.S. economy has seen a surge in growth with an unemployment rate that has dropped from 4.1% to a 17-year low of 3.8%. The GOP-backed tax plan has allowed corporations to offer bonuses and pay increases to employees.

“The Democrats don’t care about people keeping more of their money. They don’t care if the job market is booming,” Republican strategist Ford O’Connell said during an interview on “After the Bell” on Friday.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has labeled the tax cut bill a “scam” and blamed Republicans for a lack of transparency.

“The lack of fairness in the Republican tax scam. The lack of openness in the process in which they wrote the bill,” she said.

O’Connell said the Democratic rhetoric is part of the left’s 2018 midterm election strategy that focuses on going against the Trump administration’s agenda.

“Essentially, what they are trying to do is basically fire up their base, throw everything including the kitchen sink at the wall, hoping that in fact works,” he said.

Posted
on In The News
by Political Quarterback
· April 07, 2018 2:30 PM

President Trump has increasingly moved the national conversation toward immigration by working to send National Guard troops to border states, setting up a conundrum for congressional Republicans who were hoping to run on the tax cuts they successfully passed this year.

Trump’s renewed immigration push could move vulnerable GOP lawmakers off the script that Republican groups have already spent millions of dollars writing through ad campaigns touting the benefits of tax reform. And it could put centrist Republicans in a difficult position if Trump demands his party revisit controversial restrictions on legal immigration while its members are trying to hold onto suburban districts that contain energized Democratic constituents.

Many of Trump’s senior aides and allies have spent months touting tax reform as the foundation of the GOP’s midterm strategy. Republicans balked last month when Trump began to threaten various countries with tariffs on a wide variety of imports due to the risk those measures posed to the economic gains the tax bill has notched since its passage late last year.

Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist, said Trump’s push to place troops along the southern border and his attention to the problems posed by illegal immigration could offer Republican voters the kind of rallying cry that the antiseptic issue of tax reform can’t provide.

“GOP voters are complacent, and there is a feeling that the tax bill won’t help us hold the House,” O’Connell said. “You need more than the bill to hold the House.”

Besides giving voters a visual representation of Trump’s commitment to border security, the deployment of troops to the border could have the added benefit of “drawing a contrast” between Republicans and Democrats on the issue of immigration, O’Connell argued.

Trump should “remind [voters] how radically liberal the Democratic Party is” when it comes to immigration, he added.

Posted
on In The News
by Political Quarterback
· March 28, 2018 9:30 AM

When Vice President Pence steps on the stage at the Minneapolis Convention Center Wednesday morning, he will be touting the tax cut President Trump signed into law last year for the second time in as many days.

The previous event in the Trump-aligned group America First Policies’ “Tax Cuts to Put America First” series took place on Tuesday in Fargo, N.D., with Pence as the headline speaker.

By the November elections, Pence may complete more than 50 events promoting the new tax law, a White House official familiar with the planning told the Washington Examiner. He is expected to have spoken at over two dozen by the end of April.

It is part of a larger campaign blitz by the vice president ahead of what figures to be a challenging midterm election cycle. Historically, the party in power loses seats, and while Trump’s approval ratings have rebounded somewhat recently, they are still in the 40s.

But the tax law is viewed by many Republicans as critical to their chances. It is the single biggest joint policy accomplishment Trump shares with the GOP congressional majorities, and both the savings to individual taxpayers it produces and the economic growth it stimulates represent the best chances to boost the popularity of the president and his party’s candidates. Pence is good at staying on message.

“As President Trump is tackling a host of issues ranging from opioids to trade, it is wise to have Vice President Pence focused on the virtues of tax cuts,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. “Particularly in areas of the country that Trump might not be as popular — suburban districts, etc. — as congressional Republicans try to hold the House of Representatives.”

“The tax bill as a 2018 campaign weapon for congressional Republicans is not yet at critical mass in terms of resonating everywhere,” O’Connell said. “Having Pence hammering home its virtues cannot hurt.”

Posted
on In The News
by Political Quarterback
· February 18, 2018 11:00 AM

Mark Marran, an operations manager for a Fortune 500 company, voted for Donald Trump. Two weeks ago he noticed an extra $100 in his bimonthly pay check, courtesy of sweeping tax cuts passed by the Republican Congress late last year.

Marran says the extra cash is nice, but it will not change his life.

These are worrying words for the GOP, which is banking on the tax cuts pushed by President Trump to help Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in midterm elections this November.

A crucial early test is set for March 13 here in western Pennsylvania. Republican candidate Rick Saccone, a conservative Trump loyalist, is vying to win a special election for a congressional seat in a district that the president won by 19 points in 2016.

Saccone, meanwhile, has been touting Trump’s signature legislative achievement as a boon for the middle class. “Tax cuts are changing lives,” says one of Saccone’s TV spots. But it remains to be seen whether the four-term state representative can persuade tax-cut skeptics such as Marran and Smith.

The special election, which will fill a seat left vacant when incumbent Republican congressman Tim Murphy quit amid personal scandal, is an early litmus test for the GOP tax message, said Ford O‘Connell, a Republican strategist.

It is “a trial run,” heading into November, he said. “Trump obviously wants to hold the seat and Trump wants to find out if he has delivered enough to keep voters happy.”

O’Connell, the Republican strategist, is optimistic the tax message will gain traction. Middle-class voters could well warm to the tax cuts by November, he said. And he believes Saccone will win next month.

Posted
on In The News
by Political Quarterback
· January 10, 2018 10:00 AM

Some blue-state Republicans are pushing for tax changes to help their constituents as Democrats seek to target the suburbs in the midterm elections.

Nearly all of the GOP lawmakers who voted against the sweeping tax-cut bill in December did so because of a cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction that would be particularly damaging in high-tax areas such as New York, New Jersey and California. Now that the bill is law, some of those lawmakers are offering legislation to prevent their constituents from seeing tax hikes.

Rep. Leonard Lance (R-N.J.), a top target in November, is planning to offer legislation that would allow everyone who prepaid their 2018 property taxes to deduct them on their 2017 returns.

Lance and others also say they still want to see the full SALT deduction restored.

And a number of blue-state Republicans, including those who voted for the tax bill, are calling for Democratic state officials to lower taxes.

The midterm elections are shaping up to be challenging for Republicans. The president’s party typically loses congressional seats in the midterms, and President Trump’s approval rating in recent polls is only around 40 percent.

A number of high-profile GOP lawmakers have decided to retire rather than face potentially difficult contests — including House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.), who said on Monday that he would not seek reelection.

Many districts held by GOP lawmakers in blue states were being targeted by Democrats even before the tax bill passed, since Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won or only narrowly lost them in 2016. The tax bill only complicates things further.

GOP strategist Ford O'Connell said that blue-state Republicans are all making the case that they’re fighting for their constituents, though they are not all doing so in the same way.

Posted
on In The News
by Political Quarterback
· December 20, 2017 11:30 AM

President Trump plans on celebrating the Republican tax bill's passage on Wednesday afternoon, when Congress could sweep away the argument that his administration will emerge from its first year without a substantive policy accomplishment.

It is unclear when exactly Trump will sign the tax cuts into law, but White House officials hope to cap off 2017 with a legislative victory this week that could overshadow the upheaval and controversy that marked much of their first year in power. The president’s allies have characterized tax reform as just the latest and largest campaign promise Trump has fulfilled in an effort to highlight the smaller achievements they say his administration has notched since Inauguration Day.

“For Trump, this is even bigger than it is for Republicans,” said Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist. “For Trump, he’s delivering on a campaign promise ... But also it shows that he can govern with the Democrats throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at him.”

“At the end of the day, he was going against headwinds even within his own party,” O’Connell said.

Democrats, however, have claimed the bill primarily benefits wealthy Americans and corporations at the expense of lower-income families, who they say will suffer as a result of the future spending cuts they argue will be necessary to offset revenue loss.

O’Connell said the public’s overwhelmingly negative views toward the GOP tax plan could ultimately help it appear more successful.

“People have such low expectations of what’s in this bill that if it does half of what Republicans think ... then they may be able to hold onto the House,” O’Connell said.

Recent polls have suggested the Republican tax plan enjoys low support among voters, many of whom remain skeptical that the bill will benefit them. For example, a Morning Consult/Politico poll made public on Tuesday found fewer than half of voters support the plan, while a CNN poll made public Tuesday found 55 percent of voters oppose the plan.

Posted
on In The News
by Political Quarterback
· December 19, 2017 11:00 PM

Near the end of President Donald Trump’s rocky first year in office, White House aides view imminent victory on a tax overhaul as a starting point to strengthen his weak approval ratings ahead of key congressional elections next November.

Some Republicans said any effort at a political turnaround must include reining in Trump's habit of lashing out at critics on Twitter.

White House aides said they recognized that Trump's poll numbers needed to start rising to limit the damage in 2018 elections in which his fellow Republicans' continued control of Congress will be at stake.

A Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives and Senate could jeopardize Trump's agenda.

Republican strategist Ford O'Connell said Trump had done much to keep his conservative base of support happy but had to expand his popularity. To do that, he needs to ease voters' concerns about his fitness for office.

"What he has to do to win over people like independents and never-Trumpers is make the American people feel comfortable with him as president," said O'Connell. "His achievements are quite striking, but he’s just not connecting (with the public).”

Posted
on In The News
by Political Quarterback
· December 01, 2017 8:15 AM

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s guilty plea on Friday to one charge of lying to FBI agents eclipsed a week of relative successes for President Trump and raised questions about how the White House would respond to the first criminal charges against someone who once worked in the West Wing.

During a week that saw President Trump win a legal battle over control of a federal agency, successfully advance one of his top legislative priorities, and score an optics win by hosting a Christmas party that some reporters boycotted, Flynn’s indictment on one count of making false statements to investigators still emerged as the most explosive story of the past five days.

Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist, said the speculation surrounding Flynn’s cooperation with special counsel Robert Mueller would create uncomfortable headlines for the president but wouldn’t derail the tax reform agenda currently making its way through Congress.

“No one on Capitol Hill is going to go, ‘Oh, gee, Flynn copped a plea, now I’m not going to vote for tax reform,’” O’Connell said.

But O’Connell noted the Flynn news would “overshadow all the good things that happened this week.”

White House officials have been operating under a “Russian cloud” since even before Mueller’s appointment over the summer, O’Connell noted, and congressional Republicans have already factored the allegations into their calculations about whether to support the president’s agenda.

Posted
on In The News
by Political Quarterback
· November 27, 2017 12:25 PM

"The priority is spending," the energetic and newly minted congressman, sporting an American flag pin on his dark suit jacket, told the C-SPAN host, soon adding, "the size of the government is really what it comes down to."

The year was 2010, and the congressman-elect was Mick Mulvaney, then a 43-year-old restaurateur and developer who rode the tea party wave during President Obama's first term to defeat 14-term incumbent Democrat John Spratt and be the first Republican to represent South Carolina's 5th Congressional District since 1883.

Fast forward to 2017. The national debt has surpassed $20 trillion. The country's budget has seen nothing but deficits for the last two decades. Spending has only gone up, even under a GOP-run Congress. And arguably, Republicans — who control the White House, Senate, and House — don't seem terribly concerned.

GOP strategist Ford O'Connell agreed with much of Corker's assessment, adding that the "realities of governing don't always comport with principle."

"Especially in Bush's case, and in Trump's case and even in Obama's case, to a great extent, when you have slim majorities in one or both chambers of Congress," O'Connell said. "And you realize that there is principle but you have to show that you can govern, and if you can't govern, well you're going to go back to screaming to the wall and talking about principle. It's a vicious cycle of what happens when you're in and out of power."

During the most recent Bush administration, Republicans often gave less of a priority to reducing the budget than Democrats, O'Connell pointed out. For instance, in 2007, Pew found Republicans were less likely than Democrats (42 percent to 57 percent) to say reducing the budget deficit should be a top priority for Congress. But shortly after Obama took office and into 2016, Republicans in Pew polls were more likely to say reducing the deficit is a top priority than Democrats or independents.

The GOP faced the same obstacle when it tried — repeatedly and unsuccessfully — to repeal Obamacare, which expanded Medicaid eligibility to millions more Americans.

"The problem is once you give someone or a group of people a benefit, it is very very hard if not impossible to take away said benefit," O'Connell said. "That's the reason why we have this issue."

Posted
on In The News
by Political Quarterback
· November 27, 2017 8:30 AM

The most vulnerable blue-state House Republicans are stuck between a rock and a hard place on the tax reform.

Democrats are pounding them for legislation that potentially would make some voters pay more in high-tax blue states. And, if history is a guide, voting against the bill won’t necessarily protect GOPers in next year’s midterm elections.

“With a lot of those blue-state Republicans, they are in trouble no matter what,” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell. “There is a blue wave coming. We are going to lose seats in the House. The only question is: How many?”

Indeed, the party in power has lost an average of 25 House seats in midterm elections since World War II. In the nine elections before which the president’s party controlled both chambers of Congress, as is now the case, it has lost an average 33 House seats.

In 2018, Republican would only have to net a loss of 24 seats to lose the majority.

Rep. Barbara Comstock is one of the House Republican in a no-win situation on tax reform. President Trump lost in her district in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., by 10 percentage points.

“Whether she passes it or doesn’t pass it, Barbara Comstock is in the path of that wave,” said Mr. O’Connell.